Michael Pol was still a Mississippi lawman when he founded an international labor recruiting company and began importing Indian workers to the U.S. in a lucrative business venture with two others, a New Orleans-based immigration lawyer and a Mumbai-based businessman.

A related series of civil suits, some filed only two weeks ago, accuse the three men of engaging in illegal labor trafficking, claiming the trio exploited 590 Indian ship workers whom they brought to shipyards in Mississippi and in Texas by charging excessive fees — as high as $20,000 each — and by falsely promising green cards. Documents that are part of a series of interwoven federal lawsuits pending in courts in Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, including exhibits, depositions and e-mails, illustrate how the trio operated to recruit workers on behalf of their client, Signal International, a company that owns the shipyards and has offices in Houston.

Pol and New Orleans-based immigration attorney Malvern Burnett had nicknames for each other and referred to their partner in India, Sachin Dewan, as “Mafioso.”

Burnett, the New Orleans immigration attorney, frequently e-mailed Dewan in India, who collected final fees from workers not long before their international flights left. One e-mail begins:

“Mafioso:

Tell them to pay up or we will substitute with willing candidates.

What can’t you make the dolts understand?”

In another e-mail, Burnett tells Dewan to deny a client’s refund request.

“I expect to be paid in full regardless of the reason offered by (client name).

He apparently told Manish that his father was dying of cancer and no longer wanted to participate in the green card program.

This is not reason to stop payment or back out on our agreement. We did the work. We need to get paid.”

Once the workers arrived in the United States, Signal housed them in crowded man-camps dubbed “the reservation,” which were built near the shipyards in Pascagoula, Miss., and in Orange, Texas, according to e-mails the company was required to produce as part of the pending litigation.

Each Indian worker — unlike U.S.-born employees — was charged a mandatory fee of $1,000 per month, which later became the basis of a separate EEOC lawsuit against Signal that alleges the company illegally discriminated against the Indian workers. That case has been pending since 2011 in federal court.

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Signal’s man-camp in Mississippi was on a “lead-contaminated site” and the camps did not meet OSHA standards, according to e-mails Signal was compelled to produce as part of the pending civil lawsuits.

This video, provided by attorneys involved in a related civil lawsuit, shows crowded conditions faced by Indian workers who were imported to America and required to pay $1,000 a month to live in so-called “man camps” by their U.S. employer, Signal Internal.

Read a key brief from a related federal civil lawsuit, David v. Signal International et al.